Swing High, Swing Low

"Competitions are for ballroom dancers," Morra said. "Ballroom dancing is for people who believe there is a platonic ideal of beauty that can be attained. Swing dancing began in the streets, and, as far as I'm concerned, it should stay there."

Like many of the Wonders, he's much more interested in experiencing the exuberant joy of dancing than in perfecting techniques, following codified rules, winning accolades.

Some swing dancers talk about the Zen of dance -- those transcendent moments when well-matched partners both lose and find themselves in the music and their movements. Skilled dancers seek those moments the way an expert skier hungers for the long run through perfect powder.

When this night's rehearsal ends, it is almost 10 o'clock. Steve and F.G. keep dancing. They are dancing so intensely they seem not to notice that the others are changing out of dance shoes, donning coats and exiting onto the dark street below.

Steve and F.G. bounce around the room together as if floating, trancelike, within their own private champagne

bubble. At that moment, the partners seem to have more in common with the Whirling Dervishes of Istanbul, and other ancient practitioners of ecstatic dance, than with the Jazz Age Lindy Hoppers of Harlem.

"Dancing," the Sufi mystic and poet Rumi wrote in the 13th century, "is not rising to your feet painlessly like a whirl of dust blown about by the wind. Dancing is when you rise above both worlds, tearing your heart to pieces and giving up your soul."

One of Steve Terry's earliest memories is twirling. He recalls, as a toddler, dancing around the living room with one of his brothers, while his father, an engineer, played boogie-woogie on the family piano.

"We'd be turning around and around and around, making ourselves dizzy," Steve says.

"That was a fun time."

Steve grew up in Oakville, Ontario, about 25 miles from Toronto. When he was 16 months old, his parents noticed a bulge on one side of his face, which turned out to be a malignant tumor. Doctors surgically removed the tumor, and radiated the lower half of his face to destroy stray cancer cells. The cure worked, but the radiation severely stunted the development of his head, face and neck. It left him disfigured and with functional challenges.

Today, Steve is 6 feet tall and broad shouldered. His esophagus remains so small that it is difficult for him to swallow some foods. His lips are misshapen. To sip from a mug of coffee, he tilts his head back, then forward, before running the mug across his mouth to catch potential drips. His speech can be difficult to understand. He speaks in a voice that is high, nasal, breathy, strained and free of rancor.